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I read that link before and thought the part about signals being reflected off into space was lame then and I still do. For simply listening there is not great benefit to tuning an antenna to resonance. Sure lots of people will say how dead their antenna is when the tuner is way off resonance but what is happening is that the tuner is actually attenuating the signals when off resonance. Tune an antenna to resonance with a tuner and then simply bypass that tuner and the results are far less dramatic. I started as an SWL'er about 40 years ago and ran everything for an antenna from a short loaded vertical in an apartment to a 600 foot longwire and when using a tuner only ever saw a small increase in signal but there was also a small increase in noise levels as well. The greatest difference was when using a really short antenna on the really low frequencies like AM broadcast band or even longwave. I had a home made tuner that would tune as low as 200 KHz. Even then the difference was only a couple S-units at best but with a corresponding increase in noise.

<blockquote data-quote="Captain Kilowatt" data-source="post: 563816" data-attributes="member: 39"><p>I read that link before and thought the part about signals being reflected off into space was lame then and I still do. For simply listening there is not great benefit to tuning an antenna to resonance. Sure lots of people will say how dead their antenna is when the tuner is way off resonance but what is happening is that the tuner is actually attenuating the signals when off resonance. Tune an antenna to resonance with a tuner and then simply bypass that tuner and the results are far less dramatic. I started as an SWL&#039;er about 40 years ago and ran everything for an antenna from a short loaded vertical in an apartment to a 600 foot longwire and when using a tuner only ever saw a small increase in signal but there was also a small increase in noise levels as well. The greatest difference was when using a really short antenna on the really low frequencies like AM broadcast band or even longwave. I had a home made tuner that would tune as low as 200 KHz. Even then the difference was only a couple S-units at best but with a corresponding increase in noise.</p></blockquote><p></p>

[QUOTE="Captain Kilowatt, post: 563816, member: 39"] I read that link before and thought the part about signals being reflected off into space was lame then and I still do. For simply listening there is not great benefit to tuning an antenna to resonance. Sure lots of people will say how dead their antenna is when the tuner is way off resonance but what is happening is that the tuner is actually attenuating the signals when off resonance. Tune an antenna to resonance with a tuner and then simply bypass that tuner and the results are far less dramatic. I started as an SWL'er about 40 years ago and ran everything for an antenna from a short loaded vertical in an apartment to a 600 foot longwire and when using a tuner only ever saw a small increase in signal but there was also a small increase in noise levels as well. The greatest difference was when using a really short antenna on the really low frequencies like AM broadcast band or even longwave. I had a home made tuner that would tune as low as 200 KHz. Even then the difference was only a couple S-units at best but with a corresponding increase in noise. [/QUOTE]

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